Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan are the leads, two cops investigating a murder of a film director.
Mark Kermode
Mark Kermode: 50 films every film fan should watch
The UK’s best-known film critic, Mark Kermode offers up 50 personal viewing recommendations, from great classics to overlooked gems.
The Arbor (2010)
Director Clio Barnard
Artist Clio Barnard’s moving film about the late Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar (Rita, Sue and Bob Too) is no ordinary documentary. Mixing interviews with Dunbar’s family and friends (seen lip-synched by actors), scenes from her plays performed on the estate where she lived, and TV footage of her in the 1980s, the film makes intriguing, inventive play with fact, fiction and reminiscence.
Mark Kermode says: “Somehow the disparate elements form a strikingly cohesive whole, conjuring a portrait of the artist and her offspring that is both emotionally engaging, stylistically radical and utterly unforgettable.”
Bad Timing (1980)
Director Nicolas Roeg
Seen in flashback through the prism of a woman’s attempted suicide, this fragmented portrait of a love affair expands into a labyrinthine enquiry into memory and guilt. One of director Nic Roeg’s finest films, starring Art Garfunkel, Theresa Russell and Harvey Keitel.
Mark Kermode says: “Roeg himself reported that a friend refused to talk to him for three years after seeing the film. Today, Bad Timing still divides audiences: monstrosity or masterpiece? Well, watch it and decide for yourself.”
La Belle et la Bête (1946)
Director Jean Cocteau
With its enchanted castle, home to fantastic living statuary, and director Jean Cocteau’s lover Jean Marais starring as a Beast who is at once brutal and gentle, rapacious and vulnerable, shamed and repelled by his own bloodlust, this remains a high point of the cinematic gothic imagination.
Mark Kermode says: “Personally I think Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro, the maestro of the modern screen fairytale, said it best when he declared La Belle et la Bête simply to be the most perfect cinematic fable ever told.”
Mark Kermode reviews “The Dig”
Mark Kermode reviews The Dig. On the eve of the Second World War, self-taught archaeologist Basil Brown is enlisted by Edith Pretty to excavate what look like burial mounds in Sutton Hoo, sparking an unlikely friendship between the pair.
Movie Review: Blithe Spirit
Mark Kermode reviews Blithe Spirit. A writer suffering from writer’s block enlists the help of a medium to hold a séance, unwittingly recalling the spirit of his deceased wife – creating an otherworldly love-triangle with his new wife of five years.
“Eternal Beauty” reviewed by Mark Kermode
Mark Kermode reviews Eternal Beauty. A woman (played by Sally Hawkins) whose life and mental health were thrown into chaos for 20 years after being left at the alter finds a new opportunity for some happiness when she meets fellow lost soul, Mike.